"Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians...[B]ut innovation is the real driver of progress."
- Bill Gates

Sen. Harkin wants to tax sales of stockHe spins it as something "Wall Street" can afford...but what about Mr. and Ms. Main Street investor? If the objective is to discourage high-frequency trading, that's one thing -- there may be very smart reasons to tax extremely short-term stock holding periods in order to slow down the computer-enhanced insanity in high finance (even so, we should thoroughly investigate whether a tax is the right way to discourage the behavior, and be very sure that it's worth discouraging in the first place). But if it Senator Harkin just wants to tax everybody, we should be far more skeptical.